Had some wierdness trying to recall from barrow downs. Read recall then cast escape rising up through the ceiling. Wandered round the level for a long time. Didn't end up recalling. Read another scroll. Took a character dump. On the dump it says I will recall soon. Hit rest. Didn't recall. Wandered around the level for a while, then just gave up on it & went on & killed the guardian.

Yes, barrow downs has an easy guardian compared to some others. Moria porch has most annoying. It's easy to get him down to one star. It takes forever chasing him around to finally kill him.

In my game, I finally can kill stuff. After giving up on the non-functional weapon "of the sun", I found a cold brand sword, then a nice high ego 'Firetongue' battle axe, doing 3d8 fire branded damage with two blows (or four with temp stats.) Now, after very many turns, I can finally kill stuff. (Including, presumably, Nar.)

I still don't see how to take on Smaug: can't shoot him, since I can't shoot anything. Can't melee him--while the weapon gives fire resistance, it doesn't have any bonus against him, and can't stand up to his damage. (I thoughtlessly sold the cold branded sword, though 2d5*3 isn't much against an 1800HP monster.)

Note: recommend Redhorn (Ogre stronghold) as a place to get gear. Ogres generally carry weapons, so at least some will be good. They also have good arrows. I finally found a place--and weapon--to dive.

I am glad to see Unangband be further updated, but I have a few questions, questions that may irritate people.

Is Unangband still plagued by the completely impossible to play melee characters at all ever problem?

Because the last time I played it, someone thought it was funny to port over some garbage blunt/piercing/slashing resistances for enemies, and make giants randomly not be hit, despite being a 9 foot 6 inch tall Maia will a 6 foot long weapon.

I could write out a war and peace length treaste on why that makes no sense ever under any circumstances, because even a blind, drunk, hallucinating, spinning in circles, on fire, zombie, ant-sized gopher could hit a damn giant.

Seriously, they're giants, you couldn't fail to at least hit their foot if you tried for a thousand years straight.
Don't even try to claim that is a good thing to make giants that hard to hit, I will breathe Nexus on you. And it won't be the resistable kind.

Seriously, Unangband used to be my favorite roguelike, but after literally every melee build became impossible even with cheating using debug commands, I gave up on Unangband.

I have no idea why it was ever added, it makes the game unplayable and terrible and possibly worthy of a crimes against humanity charge at the Hague, , and it should have caused time hounds to show up and breathe the person responsible for it back to a toddler's age, but I am still glad it is still being worked on. It was my favorite variant.

I again mean no harm by my words, but if it's not broke, don't make it completely broken.

TL'DR is Unangband still full of the "pierce/slash/blunt resistance/immunity that only fits in Dungeons and Dragons, and a handful of other games."

I think it doesn't matter what weapon I use, you just have a chance to miss a giant magically. You fail to reach, lol wut, aim for the foot.

So, Unangband still has the broken mechanic in it.
I'm literally summoning Hounds of Tintalos after someone.

I mean, why add something that only completely makes the game unplayable? That doesn't make sense to completely gimp all melee builds, and make only mages usable. Seriously, that was not designed well at all, and it also gimps all melee artifacts into being pointless.

That needs to be removed first and foremost, with an apology for adding it in the first place by the person who did so.

Under penalty of being literally poked to death by Stormbringer in real life.

I mean, are we certain time travel doesn't exist? Because I'm making it exist just to make this not be a thing.

* Lack of squelch is brutal. Body parts everywhere, getting in the way.
* Auto-pickup of ammo doesn't work correctly. It lets me pick up more than I am able to carry
* Infravision shouldn't work through ice walls.
* Should be able to pick a hand with putting on a ring when two are worn. This is just a pain.

Update:
Scrolls of recall shouldn't prompt. Let inscriptions do that. Or if they must prompt, they should work as well as inscriptions, and not disappear when not used. I keep losing them to this silly feature, and they aren't common enough to lose to UI weirdness.

Conceptually there's nothing that says that you wouldn't be able to detect that a given patch of ice isn't as cold as the patch next to it. But I agree it seems odd; I can't imagine that the amount of infrared radiation given off by your average creature would be able to meaningfully penetrate an ice wall.